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Who is Jim: The internet has a lot of ideas about the president’s mysterious friend

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Updated: 5:41 PM CDT Jul 13, 2017

Who is Jim: The internet has a lot of ideas about the president’s mysterious friend

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Updated: 5:41 PM CDT Jul 13, 2017

Who is Jim: The internet has a lot of ideas about the president’s mysterious friend

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Updated: 5:41 PM CDT Jul 13, 2017

For all things Paris, President Donald Trump's go-to guy is Jim.

The way Trump tells it, Jim is a friend who loves Paris and used to visit every year. Yet Jim doesn't appear to be accompanying Trump on his first trip as president to the City of Lights. In fact, Trump has said repeatedly that Jim doesn't go to Paris at all anymore. Trump says that's because the city has been infiltrated by foreign extremists.

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Whether the enigmatic Jim exists is unclear. Trump has never given his last name. The White House has not responded to a request for comment about who Jim is or whether he is on the trip.

Trump name-dropped Jim again and again on the campaign trail, but his friend didn't receive widespread attention until Trump became president. For Trump, Jim's story serves as a cautionary tale — a warning that even a place as lovely as Paris can be ruined if leaders are complacent about terrorism.

Instead he praised his host, French President Emmanuel Macron. Paris was "going to be just fine," Trump said, because France now has a "great" and "tough" president. He joked that Macron had better do a good job, "otherwise you're going to make me look very bad."

Jim's biggest moment in the spotlight was during a high-profile Trump speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. Trump explained that Jim "loves the City of Lights, he loves Paris. For years, every year during the summer, he would go to Paris. It was automatic, with his wife and his family."

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, responded by tweeting a photo of herself with Mickey and Minnie Mouse inviting Trump "and his friend Jim" to France to "celebrate the dynamism and the spirit of openness of #Paris."

The internet has a lot of theories about who the president’s friend “Jim” really is.